“Jesus,” he gasped. “Enough. Bed. Now.”
But suddenly there was the sound of a phone ringing. It was not Elaine’s house phone; the ringing came from close by, from Blade’s jacket pocket.
Angel.
The long-awaited call. But God almighty, why now? He felt his erection wither in Elaine’s mouth. She released him and looked up at him questioningly.
“Golly, Blade, you’re not going to take that?”
He had the phone in his hand already. “I have to, I have to. It’s business.”
“Blade!”
“I’m sorry, Elaine. I’m going to the other room.”
Blade left her hanging in the rings and shuffled to the door, trousers held up with one hand, phone in the other.
Don’t stop, he urged the phone; don’t hang up now. He shut the door and leaned against it, panting. He took a deep breath.
“Macken.…”
“Blade, it’s Peter.”
He blew his top. The little gobshite. He said things to his son that he’d never said before, things that no father has a right to say. When Blade had finished, Peter’s voice was small and nervous.
“You weren’t at home. I tried you dozens of times. I know I promised I’d never ring you on your mobile again—but I had to.”
There was no sense being angry now. The damage was done. He sighed heavily.
“All right, Peter—spit it out.”
“Er, the cockroach is gone, Blade.”
“Gone?”
“Lock, stock and barrel. He came around in a taxi today and moved a load of his stuff out. Joan was in bits.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“No. And he didn’t say when he’d be back either. I heard them arguing in the kitchen. He was on crutches, too, Blade. He looked as white as a sheet. I think he must have been in an accident.”
“Poor chap. How’s your mother now? Is she all right?”
“She’s gone to a friend’s house. You know what I think, Blade? I think Roche is gone for good. That’s why I had to ring you.”
Macken relaxed. Through the timber of the door he heard music. Not minimalist this time but something that took him back to his Arabian days and nights. The impossible bending of high notes, the throb of goatskin drums, soothing and enervating at the same time.
Of all the people who should call him now, it had to be his son. Blade felt love.
“Take care of your mother. Will you do that, Peter?”
“You sound funny, Dad.”
“I’m grand, Peter. Believe me, I’m grand. Good night, son.”
Thirty-eight
Elaine de Rossa was lying on the bed when he returned. The rings still swung slightly. Her eyes were glassy. Blade smelled something pungent in the room. Hashish, very strong, very African. From hidden speakers came a song in Arabic, North African, a mesmerizing chant sung by boy sopranos, with violins and pounding drums rising in volume, then receding. Blade was back in the desert, under a black sky filled with painfully beautiful stars. This was where lust began.
“Get your kit off,” she murmured huskily. “And no more police business tonight.”
He struggled out of his clothes, felt passion return. Elaine thumbed a switch behind her head and the music increased in volume. He joined her.
“Fuck me, Blade,” she said. “Fuck me now.”
Blade’s thrusting began slowly. His hands alternately squeezed and relaxed on Elaine’s buttocks, her vagina kneading his erection. She called his name and the name of God. The voices of the boy sopranos entwined round an inconceivable note as the African drums beat more loudly and insistently. He thrust faster and deeper, felt his first juices emerging. Time to think about the Girls from Brazil.
The Girls from Brazil. There’d been three of them. And what they’d taught him in 1980 beat the hell out of thinking of ice and vinegar.
The African drums pounded wildly, their rhythms seeming to resonate in an echo chamber; now came the violins, bowed upright, Maghreb style, like an old-fashioned viol. Elaine was thrusting her pelvis up to meet his every stroke. Their bodies were soaked.
He’d replied to an advertisement in a German newspaper during an especially idle and boring weekend. The three women had been purveying tantric yoga. Blade had known nothing about it, but they’d sold it well. The lessons, they’d said, would be costly, but he’d emerge from them a new man. What had clinched it for Blade was that the lessons were practical ones: seldom had the term “hands-on” been more appropriate.
They’d given him his own mantra, one easily memorized. You chanted it first, over and over, until it spun in your head, looping like the outgoing tape of an answering machine. Then it really was in your head; you didn’t need to chant it aloud. It released the power of Shiva and Shakti, the male and female opposites, what the Buddhists call samsara and nirvana.
The mantra was only a preliminary. The yoga itself did things to Blade Macken’s libido that a live, personal group session with every Playboy centerfold girl couldn’t hope to rival.
The hours passed.
“Gosh, Blade,” Elaine gasped at last, “where did you learn this stuff?”
He didn’t think it was prudent to tell her. Instead, he turned Elaine over on her belly and began to massage her buttocks. She trembled at his every touch, kicked her feet in ecstasy. Blade’s hands went to the lips of her vagina and he parted them tenderly. Holding her open as wide as possible, he slid his cock between his fingers and entered Elaine. He was deeper than he’d ever been. She moaned loudly. There were more drumbeats and African violins playing; they merged with the mantra that revolved in Blade’s head. Time lost its meaning for him. He felt that only seconds had gone by, but knew from experience that his perceptions had altered.
Now his cock was slowly massaging Elaine’s parted labia. Blade no longer knew where he ended and she began.
“My God, Blade,” she whispered, “it’s like you’re fucking me and licking me at the same time. This is unreal.”
No, he thought, this is real. Unreality was the domain of the woman who called herself Angel.
Another unreal thing was: he felt her presence close at hand, almost in this very room.
* * *
The nights were the worst.
When the traffic passing along the wharf had trickled to a few stray passing cars, when the voices in the adjoining building and below her were silent, when only ghosts were there to keep her company, that was the worst time of all.
Carol couldn’t sleep at a time like this, when the sins of the world came to call on her. She knew she was responsible; her diary had told her so. But she had written that diary, if only to remember herself as she’d once been, to chart her day-to-day sinking, to her becoming this other person. It was her and it wasn’t her; that was the most puzzling part of all.
When her daddy’s voice spoke to her during the hours of darkness, telling her things, Carol heard his voice sometimes from outside her, sometimes from within. His voice told her things she knew and many things she couldn’t have known. She was damned; she knew that. Each day brought fresh horrors, as she descended lower and lower, felt herself being pulled apart, felt the contagion in her head sallying out into the world.
Her daddy knew about the wickedness, had tried to help her stop it. But even from where he sat behind the sky, watching over her, he was powerless. Her thoughts were escaping. She couldn’t keep them inside. Out, out they poured, the flow growing daily. She’d looked on—helpless—when the wicked thoughts had gone out and entered her mammy. Carol had watched her mammy trying to fight the evil that seeped out of her daughter’s mind.
The children on the street were right: She was a witch. The Devil had taken control of her and was using her for his evil ends.
He’d made her murder her mammy.
Oh, God! Carol had seen the horror in her mammy’s eyes when realization had finally dawned. But she hadn’t been able to do a thing to stop it; neither of them could have
stopped it.
The whiskey helped sometimes. It kept the wicked thoughts from leaking out. How much of it had she drunk now? Half a bottle? It helped. When she’d drunk this much, Carol was aware of how the thoughts ran around inside her head, searching for some means of exit. But Carol knew they couldn’t escape so easily then—because they kept returning; that was the proof. They couldn’t harm anybody but Carol.
A foghorn sounded low and menacing in the distance. It shocked Carol; shocked her because she imagined that she’d dropped her guard, allowed the wickedness to fly out of her and take the souls at sea. Blade Macken, the Devil, had been right about the souls on O’Connell Street: It was Carol who’d taken them. More evidence of her power. She’d made the men who’d made the gelignite that made the bombs. She couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t stop it. Those men had picked up her evil thoughts. She was responsible.
She was the Angel of Death.
Carol went to the canvas bag, unzipped it, and took out the funeral shroud. She stripped off all her clothes, threw them in a corner, and slipped the gown over her head.
She was Mammy now. In the dim light of the candles and the forty-watt bulb—forty jewels per second!—she studied the front of the white garment. It was gone, the blood was all gone; no trace remained.
She remembered the voice inside her head, on that other night. It had been her father’s voice, guiding her steps.
She is going upstairs, Daddy’s voice had said; she is turning the handle; she is opening the door; she is screaming silently, looking at the dead woman on the bed; she is seeing the empty sleeping-pill bottle on the nightstand; she is seeing the kitchen knife on the floor; she is seeing the red ruin of the woman’s wrists; she is touching the still-warm blood on the front of the nightgown, bathing her hands in it; she is reaching down and pulling up the gown, up over the woman’s head; she is going to the bathroom and throwing the death shroud in the tub; she is scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing and not feeling the scalding water blistering her hands; she is scrubbing until the water turns pink and the gown becomes white again.…
Carol took her hairbrush and went to the cracked mirror on the wall. She began to brush slowly. Only lightly, just enough to take her hair away from her mammy’s face. It was tangled and dirty, but so was she. So was her mind.
The gown was practically sheer at the front, where the blood had been; the material had been worn to a thread by the scrubbing, the bleaching. Carol laid the hairbrush aside and cupped her breasts in her hands. She squeezed and felt beautiful.
She is squeezing her exquisite breasts, her mammy’s voice inside her head said; she is closing her eyes and moaning; she is growing wet in her private place; she is trembling all over her wonderful body, Mammy said. She is coming, Mammy said.
Carol wiped herself carefully with the last of the tissues. She felt cleansed, purified. This was one power that couldn’t leave her. When she’d welcomed men in her private place it was their power she’d taken; she’d given nothing of herself away—just as it should be.
She stripped off the nightgown, rolled it up carefully, and stowed it in the canvas bag. Would she dress again? There seemed little point now; it had grown hot in the room; she’d just crawl between the thin blankets. She was tired, thought she could sleep now.
Dolly wants to speak to Blade.
It was not her mammy’s voice; it was Dolly’s.
Dolly wants to speak to Blade, wants to speak to Blade.
Carol went to Dolly’s bed and looked fondly at the closed eyes. She couldn’t understand why Dolly wished to talk to Blade just then. There would be plenty of opportunity in the morning. No, Dolly should sleep now; it was better.
Carol went to the window and drew back the boards. A rush of air entered the room, cool and refreshing: the wind from the northwest. She craned out and delighted in the feel of it on her bare skin, breasts. The lights on the far quay danced in the black water. The Custom House, white in the floodlights, looked like a sculpture of sugar icing. Its beauty saddened her for reasons she couldn’t articulate.
Carol began to weep uncontrollably. Dolly simply could not talk to Blade now. He’d misunderstand.
* * *
Elaine was weeping. She lay on her belly and Blade saw her shoulders jerk with every sob. He stroked her back tenderly.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Nothing’s the matter. I’m crying because I’m happy. I’ve always done that. It’s silly.”
“No, it’s not, Elaine. Cry all you want.”
“What happened to me, Blade? I seemed to be in a place I’d never been before. It was weird. No one’s ever made me feel things like that before.”
Blade said nothing, just ran a hand up under Elaine’s long hair, now heavy with perspiration.
Angel hadn’t called. He couldn’t understand why. This should have been her big night, her last chance to twist the knife before the rendezvous, before the kill.
He thought of sex and death—how close they were. The freaks sometimes hanged themselves in order to experience the ultimate hard-on: the one you were supposed to get on the gallows. Blade had investigated one such incident less than a year ago; they’d thought at first it was murder.
“Mind if I smoke?” he asked suddenly. Elaine murmured.
Blade got up and went to where his jacket lay, found his Hamlets and lit one.
He went naked to the window, raised a slat on Elaine’s venetian blind and looked out on the lamplighted street, at the Georgian houses on the other side.
The little death is a preliminary to the big one. It sharpens the senses, forces you to evaluate what you are: a journeyer, nothing more.
Macken was prepared for his journey. As he looked out Elaine’s window, he thought back on his life. Katharine, Joan, Anne, Peter, Sandra: all way stations on the journey into night.
“Blade…” Elaine’s voice was drowsy.
He went to her. She lay on her side, eyes shut.
“What is it, Elaine?”
“I wasn’t deceiving you.”
“It’s all right.”
“When we met … when I saw you first, I didn’t know you were a guard. Business came later.”
“Don’t talk about it. Go to sleep.”
“Hmm. Will I see you again? Ever?”
Elaine de Rossa. Beautiful Elaine de Rossa. The final way station before night.
“Yes,” he said.
He returned to the window. Carol hadn’t called him because she’d wanted him to savor the little death, to wrest all he could from life while he was still vital. They were joined together by place and circumstance. And by death. Death to Blade meant utter annihilation, the snuffing out of all of this. When he went, the world would disappear with him.
Vanity? Perhaps. But these were the thoughts of the condemned man. Blade looked out on what he sensed was his last night. The day had been his swan song, the tying together of the loose ends. He didn’t think he’d see night again. Nor did he care all that much.
Elaine de Rossa’s breathing had deepened. She was asleep. Blade finished his cigar and dressed leisurely. He went to the bed and planted a soft kiss between Elaine’s shoulder blades. She sighed in her sleep. Blade covered her with the comforter. From the sides of the room the plush animals stared at him, eyes of glass, dumb.
There was a lightening of the night sky when he stepped out onto the street. A delivery truck passed by. The last night of Angel was over.
Thirty-nine
They didn’t offer the condemned man a last meal, Blade reflected. What would he have ordered? Something he’d never tried before in his life, that was it. Roast swan stuffed with truffles; a terrine of Seychelles swordfish; pâté of polar bear liver and red wine; elephant’s balls, lightly grilled.…
What they offered him instead was a Kevlar vest. It was so light that Blade had doubts that it would stop a BB shot from an air rifle, never mind a real bullet fired at close range. But Gareth Smyth ass
ured him that it would do exactly that, and was backed up by Redfern.
“The worst injury you can sustain is a bruise,” the American said. “We use these all the time in the field. Incidentally, that’s the same model the president will be wearing,” he added with a touch of pride in his voice.
“Pity they can’t,” Blade said, buttoning his shirt over the bulletproof garment, “make a face mask out of this stuff. Then I’d really feel safe.”
“They’re working on that, but so far they can’t get the porosity right,” Redfern said, and Macken decided it was yet another example of the CIA man’s morbid humor. “What are you carrying, by the way?”
Blade showed him the .22-caliber police issue. Redfern looked unimpressed.
“At least you can stash it away where it won’t be seen,” he said with disdain.
The vest was warmer than Blade had anticipated; that was its main drawback. Hardly had he put on his jacket when he felt a glow on his chest that quickly turned to a sticky, uncomfortable feeling; it was like wearing a nylon shirt in a heat wave.
He caught Sweetman looking at him. Her expression was one that he couldn’t immediately identify. He read concern there, yes, but there was something else as well.
Was this how the condemned man felt? Did he suddenly, in the last hours—minutes—of life, discover that people he’d taken for granted had harbored strong, emotional feelings toward him? At six-thirty on the final day of Angel, Blade Macken saw Orla Sweetman as she really was: a warm, loving person whose loyalty to him had always, perhaps, concealed a more powerful sentiment.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Smyth said, derailing Blade’s train of thought. “There’s still time to deploy my boys. We could have the—”
“No, Gareth,” Blade said. “We can’t risk it. Look, we know who she is, we know what she’s done. But what we still don’t know is what she’s capable of. To be honest about it, nothing she could do would surprise me anymore. She chose the Custom House for a reason and I think it’s because she can keep an eye on it, wherever she may be. She’ll be watching my every move. No, let me do this her way.”
The Angel Tapes Page 24